Month: October 2019

On the Water Front

When it comes to hydration there are two schools of thought.  I have spoken with medical doctors who claim that it suffices to drink when one is thirsty.  The massage therapists, on the other hand, to a woman recommend the drinking of prodigious quantities of water.

Now water is the philosopher's drink (Henry David Thoreau) and the via media is his path. So I tread the middle path between the sawbones and the back rubbers. First thing upon arisal is the downing of two 12-ounce glasses of purified water.  That is against my druthers, a half a cup (4 oz) being all I desire at that time of the morning. But I pound 'em down. That is followed by two cups of strong java. A most excellent diuretic! Then a third glass topped with some orange juice — an 80-20 mix — before I leave the house for the morning constitutional which features three episodes of clear micturition, two in the wild, leaning upon my staff, gazing into the Apeiron, the third back at the shack.   And then I maintain the inflow for the rest of the day sipping Perrier and San Pellegrino and the effluent of my reverse osmosis tap. Two more cups of coffee for a total of four for the day. No sugary drinks. And no booze until the weekend. And a moderate quantity of that.

Your body is a temple, not an amusement park, pace Anthony Bourdain, who brought his nihilist life to a fitting conclusion by hanging himself.

And if it is a temple, you might want to think twice about defacing it with tattoos, the graffiti of the human body.  Leave the tats to the drunken sailors and rough trade that one might find on the waterfront.

The Virtuous are Too Scrupulous to Rouse the People against their Tyrants

Here:

Describing Wilkes and two of his allies, Walpole wrote, “This triumvirate has made me often reflect that nations are most commonly saved by the worst men in [them].” Why? Because, he concluded, “The virtuous are too scrupulous to go the lengths that are necessary to rouse the people against their tyrants.”

Until the coming of The Donald, that had certainly become the case in recent American politics. Until the Orange Menace loosed the fearful lightning of his terrible swift tweets, the “virtuous,” rather battle-fatigued traditional conservative movement—even when controlling both houses of the Congress—had been out-shouted and outmaneuvered by the unholy alliance of a Left-dominated, morally nihilist pop culture and educational establishment, and what is laughably referred to as the “mainstream” media, all nudging an increasingly radicalized Democratic Party further and further to the left.

There comes a time when a corrective is needed, an outsider self-powered, unowned, and unafraid to kick the asses of the Demo Rats to his Left and expose the fecklessness of the cuckservatives to his Right.  A corrective and a clarifier. No more of the usual Left versus Right. The battle for the soul of America is now a contest between the borderless globalism of the greedy elites and an enlightened nationalism, populist and patriotic.  Hillary versus Donald, to personify it.

Asinine Leftist Verbiage

An incomplete list, and not necessarily in order of inanity, insanity, or asininity.  I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to explain the various ways in which the following offend against clear thought or are otherwise objectionable.

  • Diversity is our strength.
  • That's not who we are.
  • We are all immigrants.
  • Comprehensive immigration reform
  • Institutional racism
  • Traitor to his race
  • Person of color
  • Native American
  • Islamophobia
  • Homophobia
  • Walls are immoral.
  • No person is illegal.
  • Dog whistle
  • Differently abled
  • Mass incarceration
  • Islam is a religion of peace.
  • The police are gunning down black youth.
  • Our democracy
  • Systemic racism
  • Structural racism
  • Environmental racism
  • Health care racism
  • Poverty causes crime.
  • Global warming is the greatest threat to humanity.

Gasoline

I paid $2.99/gal for unleaded regular on 9/30 at a local Shell station.  I usually gas up at Costco where I could have saved around 20 cents per gallon.  I wonder what the poor schmucks in the People's Sanctuary of Californication pay.

Word of the Day: Obvelation

A concealing, concealment, hiding, veiling. Antonym: revelation.

My example: Her selective self-revelation was as much an intended obvelation.

Example from Stewart Umphrey, Complexity and Analysis, Lexington Books, 2002, 140:

Since divine revelation is never without obvelation, those bound back to God in inquiry need a hermeneutics to distinguish what belongs to Him from what belongs to the medium of His self-presentation.

The Meaning of ‘Asshole’

The author offers a cognitivist as opposed to expressivist analysis of 'asshole' and other foul words.  But the guy is a 'liberal,' as witness the following bit of squeamishness:

(2) pejorative terms, which assume false normative or moral claims about certain independently identifiable groups of people (e.g., "honkey”, "wop”, "kike”, “limey”, "chink”, "n—-r");

He refuses to write out 'nigger' as he does in the other cases. Why not?  The author is well aware of the use-mention distinction. He knows that to talk about a word is not thereby to apply it to someone or something. Why is 'nigger' more offensive than 'kike'? Why the double standard?

The author appears to be 'p.c.-whipped.'